Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Science/2016 November 3

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November 3

Strabismus and Amphetamine use?

Our article on Strabismus says nothing about amphetamines, but a broad google search gets over a megahit. The main ones seem to be anecdotal. Is there any RS about this phenomenon? Thanks. μηδείς (talk) 04:33, 3 November 2016 (UTC)

A quick scan of the professional literature doesn't turn up anything major about amphetamines and strabismus in adults, but interestingly there are several papers describing increased occurrence of ocular problems in children born to addicted mothers (perhaps not surprising). Fgf10 (talk) 09:46, 3 November 2016 (UTC)

Reasons for immune response in food allergies

I've browsed food allergy and food sensitivity and it seems neither describes the underlying causes of why exactly in some cases an otherwise healthy immune system reacts to harmless stuff. Food_allergy#Pathophysiology says in particular that "The IgE antibodies identify the allergenic proteins as harmful and initiate the allergic reaction". What's the reason for such false positives? Could they be a vestigial reaction left evolutionarily from our ancestors who could not digest some foods? Institute of Food Research says here that "We do not know what makes some proteins, and not others, food allergens", so I'm wonder whether this is indeed unknown. Curiously enough, non-seafood meat seems to be a very rare allergy trigger. PS: I'm not seeking a medical advice. Brandmeister^talk 21:50, 3 November 2016 (UTC)

The IFR link (funny to see them linked to, I used to work next door to them) is still current as far as I'm aware. There's a lot of theories, including evolutionary ones as you mention, but no evidence to favour one over the other. There may be a small genetic component, as there is some family risk, but that doesn't tell us that much more yet. Fgf10 (talk) 07:51, 4 November 2016 (UTC)

There is no reason for this. Viruses and bacteria and other pathogens are constantly trying to evolve ways of slipping past the immune guards, so the immune system needs to respond very broadly to capture as many as possible. Tuning it so perfectly that it responds to all pathogens and no non-pathogens is functionally impossible -- inevitably some pathogens slip by and some non-pathogens generate responses. These are failures of the system. Failures have causes but they do not have reasons. Looie496 (talk) 19:00, 4 November 2016 (UTC)